Cloudy
by Fuuga Kumi
Summary: AU. With his friends gone, Harry finds it to hard to live in the world of magic anymore. So he packs up his bags and turns to a monotonous life as a muggle. But The Boy Who Lives should know that magic has a strange way of finding it's way around. Edited.
1. Cirrus incinus

Cloudy

**A.N. This story is written for, and dedicated to, one of my dearest friends. Go look her up on , yamimoukin, she does some amazing things with the Harry Potter fandom. This story is finished, I'm just going through and tweaking the rest of it, and I'll be posting it bit by bit until May 26, which is yamimoukin's birthday. **

**This is my first actual foray into the world of Harry Potter fiction, so be gentle with me okay?**

**Standard disclaimer applies. Please enjoy. **

**1. Cirrus incinus**

Harry kept them all tacked to his wall in a single file line. He couldn't handle staring at the moving, whirling pictures he grew up with; but it had been a simple matter to take those enchantments off the photos so they stared at him, frozen in one position forever.

There was Sirius (first dead), and Professor Dumbledore (next dead), Neville (dead), and Luna (dead). Hermione and Ron (dead and dead), Fred (dead) and George (presumed dead), Seamus (dead), the Creevey brothers (dead dead), Hagrid, (dying), and set far away from the others almost out of sight was Ginny (dead dead dead they were all dead and not moving because they couldn't anymore because they were _dead_). The very thought left a bitter taste inside him.

It had been hard, borderline impossible, to do more than keep on breathing. _And what for_, the thought had crossed his mind, _if everything I held dear has been snatched so cruelly away from me? _

But it was Mrs. Weasley, of all people, that pulled him around. She visited him, weekly-daily-hourly it didn't matter, she was there constantly it seemed. Bringing him soups and stews and other warm things to try and force life back into his bones. She had lost half of her family, of her children she had birthed and brought into the world and raised only to watch them die in the endless power struggle.

_I wish,_ he thought darkly one afternoon as the rain beat a steady tempo outside the hospital window, _that I had never gotten the letter. I wish the Dursleys could have protected me from this world better_. Because while his childhood had been hard, and lonely it had at least never known the love he had let slip through his fingers. _Dead, dead they're all dead. _

_And I am alone._

It never stopped being hard, he realized, to move on past all the others. Some days it would hit him suddenly, brought as a whisper on the wind _they're gone._ And it was all he could do not to curl up into a corner and sob into himself.

He learned though, like all other things he had ever stumbled upon in life, that it became more tolerable- never better- but manageable to get up in the morning.

So he did the only thing he could; to hold on to those precious shards of sanity. He cleared his Gringott's vault, transferring all the wizards coins into common _muggle_ money. And he returned to the world in which he had never felt comfortable in before.

Because this time, it was too damn hard to be _The Boy Who Lived._

Molly, as she now insisted upon being called, still kept in touch. Letters sent through muggle post, phones made on muggle land lines. No more floo-powder, no more owls, no more chasing biting gnomes out of the gardens. His poor aching heart couldn't take it anymore.

Even she had a life to return to though, and while the letters still came they were much more sparingly. One more touch of love slowly dying through his own inability to reach out.

He still had his wand, tucked away safely in his sock drawer; some habits he realized bitterly, were too damn hard to break. And if the stick wasn't close by at all times he felt strangely vulnerable.

Harry kept busy with two part time jobs, it was the best he could do; working in a book store (and every day he thought of soft brown eyes and wide smiles and a know-it-all voice) and as a veterinarian's assistant (rock cakes and hippogriffs and dragons kept in pockets). He was some kind of masochist, he knew it, but it was better than nothing, and better than the everything he would have _back there_. Where there would still be no-one to enjoy it with him.

He felt it, slowly but surely; the undeniable truth that he was _forgetting_ where he came from. What he had been, _who_ he had been. Slowly the memories faded; train rides and robes and broomsticks high in the air and the feeling of cauldrons and ghosts. He tried, only once, to cast a spell with his wand.

"Lumos," he had muttered, standing in his boxers in the middle of his darkened bedroom. The wand spluttered, flickering a faint light against the wall, and then died out.

He had forgotten magic. And with that gone, the surety of what had happened followed in a dark, trickling path.

Months, years, he wasn't quite sure which anymore, had passed by uneventful. He was nobody special here, just Mr. H. Potter; man behind the check-out counter, the kind faced individual holding a child's squirming puppy who was getting its first set of shots

.

And then, magic happened again.

A pile of books had been set on the counter, someone's blond hair just barely visible over the sizable stack. Amused, Harry scanned them at a steady pace. "Bit of bad weather out there eh?" he said conversationally.

The person grunted in response, the head dipping down and the unmistakable shuffle of coins could be heard.

"Right then, your total comes to…" Harry found himself trailing off, his grip on one of the books becoming slack as he met a pair of wide set grey eyes. "Malfoy?" he asked, voice raising several octaves; earning him a few unappreciated glares.

Malfoy took a step away from the counter, holding his arms- palm out- up. "I don't have a wand," he said in a strangely flat voice, "and I'll come quietly."

Harry couldn't help the amused grin that found its way onto his face. "What are you on about?"

"You're an auror aren't you?" asked Malfoy, raising one pale eyebrow in confusion.

Harry snorted, a loud undignified noise, as he gestured around the store. "Does this look like a place an auror would set a trap? Don't be daft, I work here legit."

A long stretch of silence. "Oh." Malfoy slapped down a handful of bills before scooping his books into his arms and beating a hasty retreat to the door.

"Oi! Wait a second Malfoy!" Harry jumped over the counter, much to the chagrin of his manager who was now spluttering behind him.

Malfoy paused in the doorway, fixing Harry with a flat grey stare. _No,_ Harry thought, _silver- his eyes are silver like magic._ The blond stared at him warily, edging slowly backwards until he knocked the door- just enough to cause the tiny bell overhead to chime softly.

Harry came to a skidding halt in front of him, grinning wildly. "I get off in two hours, go for coffee with me?"

Malfoy's face froze; somewhere between amused and disgusted. "You are certifiably _insane_" he hissed just before kicking the door open and exiting with one more muddled look over his shoulder.

Harry couldn't quite contain the bubble of laughter that escaped him. Draco Malfoy; while the memories were hardly pleasant ones he was glad to say he ran into him today. It helped assuage his fears that he wasn't completely crazy, yet.

The rest of Harry's afternoon passed by in a barely remembered blur as he let himself sink into perfectly safe recollections of quidditch matches and afternoons filled with misled stalkings.

Harry was still grinning foolishly when he left the bookstore that evening. He turned to offer a cheerful wave goodbye to his manager and came face to face with Malfoy.

The blond was standing moodily in the misty rain and giving Harry the most peculiar glare. "You try anything funny and I'll scream rape." He grumbled, before turning around and ambling off to the coffee house up the street.

In somewhat of a daze, Harry followed.

Several mugs of black coffee later and they were both still staring awkwardly over each other's shoulders. _Well this is productive,_ Harry thought sardonically.

He coughed into his hand, straining for something to say. _Anything _would be nice at this point. But too many death threats and snide remarks laid between them to make this an easy excursion.

Still, Harry plows forward, "So, what are you doing now days?" He winces at the brassy cheerfulness of his voice.

Malfoy jumps a little in his seat, blinking at Harry with wide eyes. "Uh," it's the least eloquent response imaginable, and somehow it makes Harry smile to see Malfoy so _human_, "I've been...around." And he takes a great big nervous gulp of his coffee.

Silence envelopes them again. The chatter from nearby tables move in to fill the empty space and Harry realizes just how out of practice he is at interacting with others.

He puts forth another, failing effort, "How are Crabbe and Goyle?"

Grey eyes narrow in some unshared bitterness. "I wouldn't know, they were put in Azkaban some years ago."

More silence, that seemed all they were capable of this afternoon.

"You're the first person I've seen from back there," Malfoy murmured to his coffee. Then he's staring at Harry over his coffee, all silver eyes. "It felt like I was the last person in the world, the only one who knew."

Deep inside his heart, Harry knew exactly what he meant. With nothing but memories to guard yourself with, memories of things nobody else around you can even verify, it was a lonely existence.

It came as hardly a surprise when he smiled at the fair haired man. "Suppose now we can be last together eh?"

They exchanged phone numbers and addresses, written hastily on café napkins and passed awkwardly to each other with open ended invitations to "stop by whenever you're in the neighborhood." Malfoy tucked his in his back pocket and Harry folded his gently in his shirt pocket. They shared one last hesitant smile before leaving, separate ways.

Days and days later, when Harry was putting away a load of fresh laundry, he couldn't help but pull his wand back out of it's hiding place. He pointed it at a pillow, laying benignly on his bed, and gave it an experimental flick. "_Wingardium Leviosa_!" The pillow fluttered, and with another nudge of his wand it rose steadily into the air.

Harry found magic again.


	2. Cumulus

**Cloudy**

**A.N. Welcome back for part two. To those who left reviews, thank you. To those who have favorited this and put me on your story/author alert, also thank you and please feel free to leave a review, I'd love to know your opinions on things. **

**I do not have a beta reader, I edited this myself. If you see any errors, or feel something doesn't sound quite right, by all means message me and I'll look into it. **

**(Also, Serapha, I replied to your PM but I don't know if it went through! If you read this please send me the link again?)**

**Standard disclaimer applies. Please Enjoy. **

There seemed, at least to Harry, to be an abundance of pet related accidents lately. All morning at the clinic he was holding down various animals that had eaten/rolled/played in something they weren't supposed to.

His day came to a climax while trying to get Belle, an obese mastiff with an issue about strangers, back into the waiting room to meet her owner. He was doing an impressive backward crab walk, practically carrying the beast in his arms and trying to talk to her soothingly. Needless to say he was failing rather spectacularly as she gazed at him with doleful eyes and curled herself closer to the floor.

"You're just everywhere aren't you?" came the amused voice of one Draco Malfoy.

Caught slightly off guard, Harry's head snapped up at roughly the same time that Belle found her owner and decided to shoot between Harry's legs. Harry gave an undignified squawk before ending up on his back, staring at the ceiling. He took a moment to ponder the physics involved in the whole stunt; how did x=y when he knew for a fact he had flipped _forward_? Then again, he realized, there was another matter at hand.

"Malfoy?" he asked, a bit belatedly.

The blond smirked down at him, not unkindly. "Really Potter, this was the last place I expected to see you." He extended his left hand, his other was curled around something tiny and shifting.

"Same to you, I didn't know you had a pet."

"I didn't, until this morning." Malfoy held out his other hand for Harry, where a tiny tabby sat clinging to his finger. She blinked at him and gave a pathetic mew. "I found her out at the site, someone sat their toolbox on her."

It took Harry a few minutes for the story to click together. "Site?" His eyes traveled up the outstretched arm and realized, a tad slowly, that Malfoy was garbed in a dirty blue nomex suit with equally dirty work boots.

Here Malfoy looked slightly abashed. "Didn't mention that, did I? I'm working over at a construction site not far from here." He grinned widely, "I'm sure I'm bringing all kinds of shame to the Malfoy name. Working with my hands," Malfoy wiggled his fingers for emphasis.

Harry couldn't help the easy smile that spread across his face. "Absolutely blasphemous." He agreed lightly.

"Mr. Potter? I'm afraid I need your help back here." the vet, a portly older woman, poked her head from around the hallway. "We've got a testy boa constrictor, and well…you always seem to have such a nice repertoire with the reptiles."

Malfoy and Harry shared a private laugh at that. "Be right there," Harry called even as he turned away. "See you around Malfoy?" he asked, hesitatingly momentarily in the doorway.

"Oh, I'm sure you have a third or fourth job that I'll inadvertently catch you at. So I suppose it's inevitable."

_How things have changed_, Harry thought merrily as he headed back to his job.

----------

Normal people do not receive visitors at two o'clock in the morning. Normal people do not receive visitors that bang loudly on the door while frantically calling out loud for them at two o'clock in the morning.

But once upon a time, Harry wasn't normal. So the knocking doesn't really surprise him, even if he is a little reticent to get out of bed. He eventually shuffled towards the noise, forgoing his glasses and not trying too hard to focus on the blurry shapes of his apartment.

Malfoy was standing on the other side of the door and looking particularly frantic even to the half blind man. He looked, to put it nicely, as if he had just woken up from a seven year slumber. And, Harry noted with some amusement, he was still in his nightclothes.

"She won't be quiet." Malfoy hissed, his hands cupped around something close to his chest.

Harry blinked slowly, feeling abnormally muddled this morning. "Who, exactly?"

Once again, Harry was met with a tiny kitten. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open in a never ending screech that seemed considerably louder than it had been earlier.

"I don't know what's wrong with her but she keeps making that noise!" Malfoy all but whined, prancing slightly in place.

Feeling suddenly awake, Harry pulled back slightly. "Look, Malfoy, I'm not a vet. I just hold animals still and things."

"I know, I know, but if there's something wrong with her and she dies on me I'm going to feel rotten. Please, surely you've picked something up working around the animals. Just look at her and tell me if you think it's worth waking up a vet."

It was the slightly desperate look in Malfoy's eyes that finally did it. The _please-I-finally-have-something_ look that Harry himself was more than familiar with. "Bring her in."

The kitten, which Draco had yet to officially name, was squirming uncomfortably on the Formica table; her belly distended and awkward on thin legs. Both men stared down at her intently, as if she would suddenly start speaking and tell them all the answers.

She offered, however, nothing more than another ear splitting baby scream.

"Has she eaten this afternoon?" Harry finally asked, stroking her gently with one finger.

"Yes, she ate like a starved man." Malfoy, Harry noticed, kept ticking his leg in some private beat.

"Has she gone to the bathroom?" prodded Harry.

Malfoy shook his head, the nervous twitching of his leg picking up in tempo. "I had a little box ready for her and everything, showed her where it was. She just kind of turned a circle and made that noise and it went on for the rest of the night."

Harry picked her up, cutting off her pained yeow in the middle. He pried her mouth open gently, studied her teeth, and noted the blue blue of her eyes. "How old did the doc say she is?"

"Only about three weeks old, max. I know it's too young to be away from her mum, but we did try to find her and I didn't want to leave the poor thing out there if she was in pain." Malfoy was babbling, which was another startling realization that Harry didn't have time to properly absorb.

Instead, he set the man with a gentle smile. "Easy fix then."

Minutes later; after a warm washcloth and an indignant kitten all was well. The kitten was off in the corner of Harry's place, chasing after something or other and causing minuscule mayhem.

Her adopted human, however, was not fairing so well. Malfoy sat at the table, staring glumly at the dirty washcloth. "That's it? All I have to do every time she needs to use it?"

The dark haired man across from him nodded. "It's really not a big deal. Her mum would do it for her for a while still, and…well I suppose you're her mum now." He grinned, only a little sleepily, at Malfoy.

The words did little to assuage the blond's fears. "I wouldn't have known that. I don't know anything about taking care of a pet." He worried his bottom lip, staring down hard at the table and then he continued, the words flowing faster and faster; "This was a bad idea. I'm being selfish by keeping her. She'll end up dead in a week. I'm never home during the day, and what if something happens, it'll be my fault. She would have been better if I het her loose after the visit to the vet. I shouldn't eve--"

"_Draco_!" Harry shouted, "why are you being so hard on yourself? This isn't something everyone thinks of at first. It's alright, she's fine now and if anything happens again I'll be there to help you."

Silver eyes gazed at him in wonder. "Really?" He asked, the disbelief plain in his voice. The unspoken question was almost tangible. _Why are you doing this Harry? After everything I've done to you._

Harry smiled, something he was finding increasingly easy to do lately. "Of course, it's what friends do after all."

He wasn't completely sure if "friends" was the correct term; but it felt right. The past still hung heavily between them, but Draco was turning out to be a comfortable companion. Someone easy to banter with, he had a surprising sense of humor and a considerable compassionate streak that-it turned out- came from his mother.

_If things had been a bit different, we could have saved ourselves a few years of lonely pain._

"She still needs a name though," Harry reminded gently.

"I can't just keep calling her kitty?"

"No, kitty does not a name make. How would you like it if we just called you _boy_?"

Silence, something mumbled under Draco's breath that sounded suspiciously like "s'not a boy. I'ma man." But Harry let it slide.

"You know...she reminds me of something...."

"Oh?"

"Yea, Professor McGonagall was a tabby animagus."

"I'm not calling my cat McGonagall."

Harry shot him a look. "I wasn't saying you should."

It was hard to tell which one looked more offended.

"...Wasn't that crazy old bat named Minerva?"

Draco left, somewhere just before dawn, with a whole slew of written things to remember for the kitten, newly christened Minerva ("you call her whatever you bloody want," Draco had growled, "I'll call her Mini.") and promising to call if anything else should arise. It was, after all, what friends did.

---------

Two days later found Harry clocking out at the bookstore, tossing a cheery goodbye to his co-workers over his shoulder as he exited. He was not the least bit surprised to find Draco standing a short distance away, looking only slightly uncomfortable.

"Are you stalking me?" Harry asked in the same tone anyone else might say "nice weather we're having".

Composing himself rather quickly, Draco snorted "you wish."

Moments ticked by while that not-quite-as-awkward-as-before silence filled the gap.

"So...then why _are_ you here?"

Draco sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I wanted to say thank you for your help the other night. I've been racking my brain thinking of some kind of nice gesture and all I can come up with is treating you to damn coffee."

Harry didn't waste time arguing that, it wasn't a big deal, obviously it was to Draco. Instead he smiled warmly, "Coffee is always a great way to say anything."


End file.
